When I say “lead generation,” the first thing that crosses your mind is probably contests, signup forms, landing pages, quizzes, and lead magnets. But, have you ever wondered what connects those powerful lead generation techniques? Yep, we are talking about consistent and continuous communication with customers.
Customer service goes hand in hand with your sales and marketing strategy. It communicates your brand’s values, engages your target audiences, and helps them find answers to their questions faster. Above all, it lets you listen to your prospects, capture their data, and convert them into qualified leads.
Here is how to use customer service to generate leads.
Use Live Chat and Chatbots
Online users prefer using live chat and chatbots over traditional customer service channels for multiple reasons. Live chat provides real-time assistance and helps users resolve problems faster. The interactions with a live chat rep are more natural than ones handled via phone calls or emails.
Live chat is a critical aspect of your sales process. According to recent surveys, website visitors who communicate with a live chat agent are 82% more likely to become customers. Unsurprisingly, when planned and executed strategically, live chat and chatbots can help you generate more qualified leads.
Now, you can use live chat for lead generation in multiple ways:
Create a pre-chat survey.
Before the conversation starts, ask a user a few key questions, such as their name, email address, or phone number. By collecting their contact details early on, you can use it later to nurture relationships with leads and turn them into active buyers.
Offer deals to existing visitors.
When a repeat visitor lands on your site, your chatbot can offer a special offer or discount. To receive a code, a user needs to provide an email address. Even if they do not redeem the offer, that is still a proven way to capture their contact info and start building relationships.
Use a chatbot to generate leads while you are offline.
One of the greatest benefits of chatbots is that they are available 24/7. Once your live chat agents clock off, you can use a bot to communicate with customers and generate leads. A bot can ask a visitor to provide their email address so a customer support agent can contact them.
Engage a visitor that wants to leave a shopping cart.
For example, your chatbot could automatically ask them whether they will continue with the purchase if they receive a discount.
Deliver personalized user experiences.
Many brands, such as Spotify or Sephora, use chatbots to ask users a series of questions that let them “understand” their preferences and recommend individualized products. Since users are eager to provide personal information to get relevant deals and offers, that is a great way to turn them into leads.
Get the Most out of Your Call Center
Call centers are still an essential part of your marketing and sales strategy. Modern call centers go far beyond cold phone calls. They integrate with your CRM system and other customer service tools, allowing you to deliver holistic and highly targeted user experiences.
To get the most out of your call center features, consider switching from analog phone services to online ones. VoIP systems for small businesses offer advanced customer service features, such as call recording, call tracking, customer sentiment analytics, etc. Once it captures customer data, a VoIP system sends it to your CRM tool, which either creates a new customer account or updates the existing one.
VoIP integrations with CRM systems benefit your lead generation strategy in multiple ways. For starters, when a customer calls for the first time, the software will automatically memorize their data, such as their name, location, phone number, purchases, and problems.
Harness the Power of Social Networks
Customers use social networks to communicate with brands, share customer experiences, and voice satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Your goal is to stay on top of these interactions and turn social media followers into sales opportunities.
Start by building your brand presence on Facebook and growing an online community. Create a Facebook group where you would bring together people with similar interests, needs, problems, and interests. For example, you could create a limited group, where a user needs to share their data to participate. Above all, online groups provide many user engagement opportunities, such as polls and quizzes, which also let you capture user data more naturally.
Social media monitoring can help you, as well. It allows you to track your brand and product mentions and get back to users faster. Apart from providing faster feedback, you could also encourage users to call your customer support team or send you their email address to get more detailed feedback.
Offer a Contact Form
SupperOffice recently did a comprehensive research study and found that 62% of companies fail to respond to customer support requests. They also learned that one of the main reasons for poor feedback delivery lies in the fact that companies do not use web forms to capture customer service requests.
Sometimes, just adding your website address, social handles, and phone number at the bottom of your website is not enough. Website forms are one of the fastest and most convenient ways for customers to communicate with your brand without leaving your website.
Precisely because of that, your contact form needs to be user-centric. Reduce the number of fields and include the most relevant ones, such as a customer’s name, email address, subject, and message. Your form should also allow attachments. That is particularly important to customers that come across a specific problem while using your product and want to send you a screenshot.
Use Customer Service to Diversify your Lead Generation Strategy
Do not limit your lead generation efforts to gated content, lead magnets, and subscriber boxes. Your customer support arsenal gives you a unique opportunity to generate qualified leads while delivering value to them.
Your task is to create a clear customer service strategy that will guide your lead generation efforts. Above all, keep testing and tweaking your customer support efforts to increase their effectiveness.
How do you use customer service to generate leads? We are listening!
Guest Author Bio: Raul is the editor-in-chief at Technivorz. He is a lot to say about innovations in all aspects of digital technology and online marketing. You can reach out to him on Twitter.